What Is Divine Revelation?
by Gordon R. Lewis
Revelation is an activity of the invisible, living God making known to finite and sinful people His creative power, moral standards, and gracious redemptive plan.
First, God discloses Himself and His power to everyone by the marvels of His creation—the amazing life support system of planet earth. We can discover some things about painters from their paintings. Similarly, in the magnificence of creation, with its microscopic complexities and cosmic expanse, we realize our dependence upon the Creator's powerful existence and intelligent design (Ps 19:1-6; Rm 1:19-20).
Second, God makes plain His moral nature and ethical principles for our well-
being by implanting oughts and ought nots in every human spirit. Even people who do not have Moses' Ten Commandments (Ex 20:1-20) feel an obligation to obey those universal principles of right and wrong and suffer guilt when they do not (Rm 2:14-15). God's moral principles restrain evil and prompt all to seek and find Him (Ac 17:27). However, everyone sins, worships, and serves the creation rather than its Creator (Rm 1:25; 3:10-23). Our habitual failure to live up to God's laws demonstrates our need for His mercy and redeeming grace.
Third, God made His merciful redemptive purposes known centuries before Christ both through mighty acts such as delivering Israel from slavery in Egypt (Ex 12) and through the reliable messages of His prophetic spokesmen (Heb 1:1). Criteria by which to distinguish true from false prophets included the logical consistency of teaching with previous revelation (Dt 13:1-5) and the verification of visible signs (Dt 18:20-22). God promised to send His anointed One to defeat Satan's destructive purposes in many ways. The Messiah would be a son of Eve (Gn 3:15), a descendant of Abraham (Gn 22:18) and David (2 Sm 7:12-16), and would be born of a virgin (Is 7:14) in Bethlehem (Mc 5:2). Because those who chose the way of sin chose a way that ends in death, without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. So believing citizens of Israel pictured Christ's coming sacrificial atonement for sin by animal sacrifices and the Passover.
Fourth, God made His just and loving plan of redemption known supremely in Jesus, the long-awaited Messiah. "No one has ever seen God. The One and Only Son—the One who is at the Father's side—He has revealed Him" (Jn 1:18). To appreciate more fully what God is like, study the life, words, works, and atoning death of Jesus. At Calvary, the guiltless Savior substituted Himself for the guilty. In doing so He defeated Satan and provided the just basis for His reconciling mercy and grace (Rm 3:25). Then the risen Christ demonstrated His saving power over sin, guilt, death, and Satan (Rm 1:2-4; 10:9-10)!
Fifth, after Jesus' ascension to heaven, God communicated His redemptive purposes through spokesmen called apostles. Jesus taught and trained them for three years and they were eyewitnesses of His resurrection (Ac 1:21-22). Through Paul, an apostle who later saw the risen Christ, God revealed His plan to unite both Jewish and Gentile believers in one body, the church (Eph 2:11-22).
Sixth, the King of kings will be revealed in all His power and glory at His second coming.
Seventh, all the above sources of revealed truth have been preserved for us in the Holy Scriptures.
Notable Christian Apologist: C. S. Lewis
Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) enjoyed a distinguished career at Oxford and Cambridge. He was also a notable literary critic and author of science fiction and children's literature (including the Chronicles of Narnia). In addition, Lewis was arguably the most influential Christian apologist of the twentieth century.
Remarkably, he was a committed atheist before his conversion to theism in 1929, then to Christ in 1931.
Lewis authored a number of important apologetic works, such as Miracles, The Problem of Pain, God in the Dock, and The Abolition of Man. In his most famous work, Mere Christianity, Lewis presented powerful arguments for the truth of the Christian faith. Originally broadcast as several BBC talks during World War II, Mere Christianity notes that even people who deny objective right and wrong cannot refrain from believing in them. Moreover, people are unable to live out the moral law they know they should. Lewis argued that this moral law, coupled with humanity's inability to fulfill it, allows Christianity to begin to "talk." The forgiveness God offers in Christ makes sense in the real world.
Lewis also maintained that Jesus Christ claimed to be God, undercutting popular notions that Jesus was something like a good teacher. Either He was who He claimed, or else He was a liar or lunatic. But the life of Jesus does not betray the character of a liar or the mentality of a lunatic. Lewis contended that the most reasonable understanding of Jesus is that He is the Lord.
Does the Bible Teach Reincarnation?
by Paul Copan
The simple answer is no. When proponents of reincarnation allege that certain biblical texts teach the soul's preexistence or reincarnation, they are approaching those texts superficially and their interpretations dissolve under further scrutiny.
Reincarnation (Hinduism) or rebirth (Buddhism) is integral to Eastern philosophy. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna talks of having "passed through many births." And what we reap in this life (karma) comes from what we've sown in past lives. Biblical, theological, and philosophical reasons, however, undermine reincarnation.
If one acknowledges the Bible's authority and storyline, one will readily recognize the Eastern doctrine of reincarnation as unacceptable. Many claiming that reincarnation appears in the Bible would go on believing in reincarnation anyway, with or without biblical support. They read reincarnation into isolated verses (e.g., statements about being "born again" in Jn 3) without respecting the biblical context or the worldview of the author. In doing so, they do not respect the biblical text as they would want their own Eastern texts respected. (What if we read bodily resurrection into their texts?)
Each of us must die and then be judged by God (Heb 9:27). When God told Jeremiah He knew him before he was in his mother's womb (Jr 1:5), this doesn't demonstrate preexistence or reincarnation; it only indicates God's foreknowledge and sovereignty. Notice Jeremiah did not say, "Before I was in my mother's womb, I knew You, God." That would make a persuasive case for preexistence! Also, the disciples' questioning whether the man born blind sinned before birth (Jn 9:2) does not express reincarnation but rather reflects the rabbinic belief that a fetus could sin while in his mother's womb (cp. Genesis Rabbah 63.6).
Furthermore, the historically supportable event of Jesus' bodily resurrection undercuts reincarnation. The biblical view of the afterlife is radically different from that of Eastern philosophies. True immortality is not the eradication or "snuffing out" (moksha) of the self nor its absorption with the One, Brahman, like a drop in an ocean. To receive immortality is to receive an immortal, imperishable physical body (1 Co 15:53-34). It is a spiritual body (that is, one supernaturally animated by the Holy Spirit) rather than a natural body (animated by a human soul). Immortality means being forever in union with God and living in God's presence with this new body in the new heavens and new earth—without losing individual identity.
Theologically, God's grace and forgiveness undercut karma. We need not bear the heavy weight of guilt and shame because Jesus Christ has absorbed all that for us. And if reincarnation is true, why help the underprivileged? Aren't they getting what they deserve—their karma?
Despite "evidence" for reincarnation, arguments for a person having lived previous lives could be explained by demonic activity (see Ac 16:16-18). A person having access to information about another's previous life does not imply that this was his own life. A psychic may purport to have knowledge of a crime, but this doesn't mean he committed it!
Philosophical problems with reincarnation are many. (1) Those "remembering" past lives tend to be clustered in the East (where reincarnation is taught), not throughout the world (as we'd expect). (2) If we forget our past lives, what purpose does reincarnation serve for self-improvement? (3) Assuming reincarnation (with an infinite past series of rebirths), then we've all had plenty of time to reach perfection. Why haven't we? (4) Reincarnation doesn't solve the problem of evil, as some claim, but only infinitely postpones it (and in some Eastern schools, evil is just an illusion anyway). (5) Reincarnation makes incoherent the Eastern idea of monism, which says that everything is one without distinction, by presupposing distinctions between (a) individual souls, (b) the karmas of individual souls not having yet reached enlightenment, (c) the enlightened and unenlightened, and (d) individual souls and the One (ultimate reality).